We completed our first semester drills last week. Fire drills were held August 29th at 10:25 and September 17th at 3:20. Tornado drills were held on September 3rd at 10:25 and September 12th at 3:20. A serious threat-intruder walk through drill was held September 10th at 9:01. I have taken videos of all the fire drills and tornado drills, but I don’t know a good way to post them here without putting them on YouTube.
Upload them using Google Drive.
The alarm went off at my college’s Fine Arts building today…
Why is it that I end up in more fire alarm activations on years that end on a Tuesday?!
(This same kind of thing happened to me 22 years ago on this exact date at my high school, but that one was much worse, with its Simplex 4040s on Continuous.)
Also, it turns out this was set off by yellow jackets getting into the smoke detector in the electrical room; they found a wasps’ nest in there! (Ironic; given the alarm going off was like getting stung in the ear!)
My old high school did a ‘trifecta’ drill a few weeks back. Started with a lock down drill, immediately into a tornado drill, followed by a fire drill…
It sounds like things went kind of rough… They never did them back to back when we were there, but it just feels so much less realistic to me… Like it could almost cause more problems and confusion?
Think about it: If you’re in a lock down, there’s nothing that takes priority over that (in general)… So then you send them to a tornado shelter, which would also take precedence over a fire alarm… It seems like they did it super backwards, and just ran them back to back to check the boxes rather than provide any real ‘training’ for what to do in those situations…
The school where I’m working as an in-classroom tutor had their first fire drill since I started, and also the first one under the current principal. I mentioned in another thread that it has a Gamewell-FCI system with SpectrAlert Advances. They do code 3, there’s no additional tone on the PA system, and the regular classrooms and bathrooms only have remote strobes. As expected, the horns were comparable in volume to the Wheelock AS’s I heard in grades 9-11, but more harsh and obnoxious sounding.
Fortunately for me, the new principal is notifying the staff of drills in advance (they apparently weren’t before), and he’s understanding if I want to wear earplugs or leave the building in advance due to my autism-related sensory anxiety. My role generally won’t require me to directly supervise the students in a fire drill. But I should be okay as long as I’m in a regular classroom, due to there only being remote strobes. It’s mostly the anticipation and the suddenness of the sound that can get to me, so just knowing when they are and knowing what I’m dealing with now gives me more peace of mind.
1 Like
My school keeps missing fire drills, so far we’ve only had 2 of them this year. The way it works at my school is that they happen at the last 5-10 minutes of class, so you actually have to grab your stuff. My school doesn’t even do hard lockdown drills, we only do soft lockdown ones. They were also lacking on drills my Freshmen and Sophomore years too.
My school has only had one fire drill and one lockdown drill so far, both in August. Last year, they had 3 fire drills (2 in August, 1 in February,) 3 lockdown drills (1 in August, one in October, and one in February,) and 1 tornado drill (in March.)
Today we had a (very underwhelming) lockdown drill. In the morning, they announced it (which they usually don’t do) talking about the new Centegix crisis alert system my school recently installed, and they said that there would be an announcement over the intercom, flashing strobes (Centegix CE-STR-02,) and the Promethean boards would be interrupted with a message. Unfortunately, in the classroom I was in, only the strobe worked.
I think this is a cool thread, but just a PSA:
Please do not doxx yourself doing this
If someone wanted to figure out about you for whatever reason and they find your TFP account with you sharing where you go to school, your sort of cooked
1 Like
Got a little visit from the fire marshall said we might have a fire drill. I doubt it since we already had our February Fire Drill and plus its raining. So maybe not. Will have one in March.
So here are the various fire drills at my high school and vocational school, which I call the votech. The high school has a Simplex 4120 VE system (buzzer) installed around the early 2000s. This has 4903-9356/8 speaker strobes and 4904-9168/9170 strobes, all set on free-run. Iirc the panel uses Mapnet. There is also an ASWP-2475W-FR in a courtyard.
The votech has a large Siemens and Cerberus Pyrotronics mix, with MTS-15’s, S15-SGL’s, MT4’s and MT4’s paired with rebranded Wheelock HS2W-24’s, U-MHU-MSC’s, U-MCS’s, Siemens ZH-MC-CW’s, and a lone Bosch AS and Wheelock MT-24MCW.
I have included a link for each fire drill:
uses older whoop High School fire drill
slow whoop and two code 3s VoTech fire drill
Nice! My school, has Electronic 4903’s 9238’s to be exact on code 3. Panel is a 4100es.
Very good. I also have a 9219 and a 9236 in my collection as well… the 9236 was recent
Very nice! I am going to try to get all of the alarms when they might switch the alarms out.
1 Like
Today we had a tornado drill. My 1st period teacher tells me when a drill happens and she said yesterday that we were going to have one. Then she realized it was actually today.
Oh. Well we don’t do tornado drills here anymore, just earthquake, fire, and lockdown drills.
We don’t have earthquake drills where I live.
Lockdown Drill (and false lockdown alarm) At My School Today!
Today, my school had a lockdown drill and a lockdown false alarm. I also found out that my school’s FA system is doubling as a mass notification system.
In my first period class, an alarm started going off. We heard a 950hz continuous tone followed by a voice message. I can’t completely remember exactly what it said, but it was something like this: “Attention! Attention! An emergency situation has been reported in this building that requires you to protect your personal safety without evacuating the building. Please get to a secure area, block all entrances, and turn off the lights” (Repeat the whole sequence indefinitely). At first, we had no idea what it was (including the teacher) because we have never heard this alarm before. Some people thought it was a fire alarm, but realized it wasn’t when the strobes didn’t start flashing. Once the voice message played, people understood what the alarm was. We actually took it seriously because no announcement was made prior. After a few minutes of panic, the principal made an announcement over the PA system that they were just testing the new alarm.
In third period, we actually had a scheduled “Run, Hide, Fight” (lockdown) drill. Around 10 minutes before the scheduled time, the principal made an announcement over the PA about the drill. At the scheduled time, the principal made an announcement saying, “This building is in Run, Hide, Fight mode. Please follow established procedures”. A few seconds after that, the alarm sounded and we did what we needed to do. It was extremely annoying because we had to listen to the same alarm and voice message repeating in a loop for over 10 minutes.
This is exciting to me because it means that they are now using the FA system as a mass notification system. I noticed that there now an STI lockdown button behind the secretary desk. I would assume that there are a few more I around the administration area. Interestingly, they opted to use speaker/strobes with “fire” lettering. Because of this, they do not activate the strobes for anything besides a fire alarm. It’s not that big of a deal, just interesting choices.
On paper, the 950hz tone seems like it would be extremely similar to the 900hz tone that Siemens uses for their voice messages. In reality, it’s different enough that it’s easy to tell them apart.
The new High school that got recently done, Had just got its fire drill, The fire alarm System is a Siemens CerberusPro. All Fire alarm devices are wheelock Eluxa speaker strobes, the ceiling varients for all the floors, the wall devices are wheelock Eluxa aswell, all outdoor devices are Wheelock ET70WTPs In White. The tone is code 3, like always, and the male tone.
1 Like
Welcome to the Forums! That’s almost the same as my high school that opened a few months ago, but mine uses mostly the slightly older Siemens SL series (Wheelock LED3’s) devices. Some of the areas that were finished last have the SL2 (Eluxa) devices. Mine also has the female voice rather than the male voice. It seems like Siemens is becoming more and more common than it already was in newer buildings.